If someone is standing in a shallow pool, and the leads of a taser are fired into the water, will it discharge electricity through the water that will stun the person standing in the pool even though the leads never touched the person himself?
PAD
If someone is standing in a shallow pool, and the leads of a taser are fired into the water, will it discharge electricity through the water that will stun the person standing in the pool even though the leads never touched the person himself?
PAD
• 
If I remember correctly, in regular tap water, it probably wouldn’t be able to conduct enough of a charge.
Salt water, though, is a much better conductor, and it would provide enough of a shock. With that in mind, human sweat is rather salty, so if some were washed into the water, it could work.
I would say that it would depend on the amount of water, the distance between the person in the water and impact point of the taser.
The taser can only provide so much electricity, so if the person is standing in a paddling pool a shock is a possibility (though it wouldn’t be the full effect). With a swimming pool i would doubt it. Remember the depth of the water is a factor here too, even if the pool is a six inches deep you could be talking about tens of litres of water, all of which will dilute the effect.
The impact point would be a big point, so i’d say have the leads land in between the feet.
Conductivity would be an issue, but the amount of water would be more of an issue.
Though i could be wrong
funzo! Funzo! FUNZO!!!
Is a Fish dying when a Flash hits the sea?
Lets assume a Flash hits the sea at Point X. An half-spherical electric Field will spread from this Point on. Think of this Field as of hundreds of electric Field lines, all going straight away from Point X and trying to maintain maximum distance to each other. If i.e. 100.000 Field lines have its source in Point X, there are still 100.000 Field lines in 100m radius, but they have a considerable greater distance to each other than in 1m radius around Point X. The density of the Field lines direcly describes the strenght of the electric Field. The laws of Physics say, that (in our example) the electric field in 1m radius is 100.000 times higher than in 100m radius around Point X.
Conclusion: if the Fish is near enough to Point X, it can directly be used for a Fish-Mac or even as briquette. Same thing for a human being.
btw: There should be no difference between Pool Water or Salt Water; even destillated Water still has its Ion-Product of 1*10^-7 mol/l and will not work as perfect isolator. The leads land “between the feet” (or the lenght of the fish) also has an influence, yes.
A Taser is much much much weaker than a Flash and most probably won’t have much of an effect to a Person swimming in a Pool, if it is not hitting the Person itself. It most defenitly won’t lead to the intended stunning effect of a Taser.
(And plz forgive my bad english 😉
“WILL THE TASER CAUSE ELECTROCUTION?
No. The output is metered by the electronics and the electrical energy in each pulse is always the same, regardless of the target condition. The electrical output will not be transferred from one person to another even if they touch. AIR TASER, Inc.’s president has been stunned by an AIR TASER while standing in water to emphasize this point.”
http://www.tbotech.com/airtaserinformation.htm
And…
“Although it may seem like an easy task to get high voltage to travel down a stream of water,
it’s actually far more complicated. Our device uses very high current as well as very high
voltage pulses to overcome fluid conduction problems.
Once the fluid conduction problems were taken care of, the next hurdle was getting sufficient
“knock down” current to the target without using a lethal electrical charge.
Several prototype units have been constructed and are being evaluated for durability and
ease of use in real world situations.
Continued prototype testing will be done by law enforcement agencies in New Mexico and
Texas. General sales should start in the first quarter of 2004.”
http://www.unitednuclear.com/water.htm
Conductivity of water depends on the amount of minerals in the water, hard minerals. The purer the water the less conductive the water is.
Best information on the 3 types of taser guns available is here
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/stun-gun.htm
Theres even one that shoots a high salinity hard mineral stream of water to electrocute.
I just want to know what kind of discussion you were having for this question to come up. Is this for an upcoming story or just one of those weird arguments that we all sometimes get stuck in?
A water cooler tipped over, so the water covers the floor and gradually makes its way to the person holding the taser. The taser is then fired into the water on thr floor and electrocutes / kills the person holding the taser
There you have it – no fancy mathematics involved
haven’t you all seen ‘TIMECOP’ ?!?
no.electricity follows the path of least resistance to ground.if the water has low conductivity (high resitance, the current would by highly restricted and likle not flow.even if the watter was highly conductive, the majority of bady would not be in the path conductivity and at most might feel a slight tingling in their feet akin to putting a 9v battery on your tounge. the reason some one can step on a live power line os the amps are hundreds of times greater and touches one part of the body while the other is touching ground. at that point the amp to ohm (resistance) difference is negligable.
I think we are all assuming youa re asking this question in regards to a situation in a comic book that you are writing.
That *IS* the reason, right? RIGHT??
We better not hear that Todd McFarlane has been killed in a freak taser “accident” next week.
Lets hope so, because those humans are bášŧárdš.
Really it depends on several factors. If the target is wearing insulating shoes that keep out the water, then no. If he’s soaked through his socks then maybe. If he has bare feet then we’re talking throwing a hairdryer into a bathtub here.
So yes, it’s possible, but to make it really convincing the shallow pool would have to be there either because the target had a bucket of water thrown on him, or he just got out of the bath/shower, or the fire sprinkler system has activated, etc.
BTW, I’m not necessarily a physics expert. I just read a lot about electricity and watch Mythbusters.
And to those who mentioned voltage vs. resistance: Tasers may be low amperage but they’re *very* high voltage. Ever been around a fallen high-voltage power line? You can feel the waves of electricity just barely touching you through the ground if you come within 25 feet of it, and if it’s humid enough you can feel it through the air too. It’s terrifying. Trust me, you’ll only try to get a closer look *once* before every instinct of self-preservation won’t allow it. I have to applaud the power line workers who deal that that kind of feeling every day yet keep working.
Lightning also, if it strikes close to your house on damp enough ground, can work it’s way inside through the very ground wire that’s supposed to protect you with enough resistance and blow up your TV and computer.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/stun-gun.htm
Electricity follows the path of least resistance. In the case of a taser that path is between the two probes. Most, if not all, of the charge would go through the water and not affect anybody standing in the water.
Umm, why do you need to know?
To condense the various arguments:
1) Most of the current will flow through the easiest path between the leads of the taser. Even wet skin is a harder path than water alone (let’s leave aside the issue of abnormally pure water).
2) SOME of the current WILL go through the body. Just not the majority. Current follows all possible paths, not JUST the path of least resistance. You simply get a lot more of it through the path of least resistance.
3) Tasers are set to create enough current through a body to lock up muscles. The bleed-over from firing into the water might be felt, but it won’t have the desired effect. And as mentioned above, they have regulators so that you don’t get a total capacitor discharge no matter how conductive the target.
4) But what about toasters in the bath? Those have much higher currents, so even the “takes the hard way through the body” fraction will be enough to hurt you.
So, what if the regulators on the taser got fried somehow, and the bulk of the capacitor discharged on contact with the water?
I’m going with no on this one. Basically everyone above me has already said the reasons why. Conductivity of the water, Voltage, and the inherent (spelling?) properties of electricity.
You want absolute proof, check with the Mythbusters at Mythbusters Forum
I’d agree with kyle and the majority here (where’s Tim? Normally you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Physics teacher but when you need one…:).
Also, don’t tasers shoot electricity for a limited amount of time? If this were a constant stream of voltage into the water it might be one thing but for a sort pulse I would expect minimal effect–certainly not enough to knock down someone. Might piss ’em off though.
On the other hand, criminals are a cowardly lot and you could probably scam one of them into thinking that standing in the water would multiply the effects of the electricity 100 fold. Feel lucky, punk?
All I can say is, “Why do you have to hurt poor Angel so?”
From what I recall about electricity, it should follow the shortest path to complete a circuit … hence the term “short circuit.” Provided conductivity is equal throughout the water, I would think the energy from the taser would complete its circuit via the shortest path … the inch or so directly between the two points … rather than going across the room and up one leg and down the other and then back across the wet floor. If you wish, I could supply you with the office phone number of Ellen Kuhfeld, an early comics fan and Julie Schwartz letterhack who is a PHD in Physics and the curator of the Bakken Museum/Library of Electricity in something-or-other. She’s an excellent reference source for such questions.
I know nuzzing!
I see nuzzing!
I hear nuzzing!
1) A person would, depending on the make and model of the taser, feel the effects if that person were standing between the two leads.
2) It would not stun them. Not because of anything to do with the water. Tasers don’t stun people.
A taser hits a person with a five second burst (you can shorten it) that ranges from kinda ticks you off to drops you face first on the ground. M26 ain’t too bad. Been hit with one in training and I could still fight through the pain. So can many others. It hurts a bit but you can still move. X26 hurts like hëll. I’ve been hit by one several time in training and describe it to others as feeling like someone were breaking my bones with a mallet. Takes all control of your body from you and you really hate life for those five seconds. Two seconds later you’re up and moving again like nothing happened. You just have two tiny burn marks and a few muscle pains that go away before you realize it.
Check out http://www.taser.com. They provide tasers to police, military and others. I’m not on a computer that can play vid (dial up) but they may have some of the stuff from their promos on there that show the effects. One that was showing at their Trexpo booth a few years back was a situation like you are asking about from, I think, Miami. Another was an X26 animal test where they reallllllyyyyyy ticked off a bull. Great bit.
As someone who just got BURNED by 480 VOLTS, let me add a thing or two.
Yep, 480 volts.
Electricity doesn’t pass through water very well. It conducts it across the surface much better. Theoretically, if you are far enough under the surface of the ocean, a lightning strike will not affect you. I have no idea how far that would be, though.
Scientists have placed electric leads under the surface of a glass of water and been unable to get much electricity to pass through the electrodes. When placed at the surface, electricity passes readily. Electricity travels by moving electrons through a conductor. Salt water will conduct better than tap water, which will conduct far better than distilled or even de-ionized water.
As far as the taser charge traveling through water, I wouldn’t know. Would the charge travel across the top surface of the water? I don’t know. Maybe, if the taser leads struck the water directly between your legs. (At this point, it would be important to mention that you would not want to experiment with this while in water that is, shall we say, crotch deep.) Would the water insulate the person being tased so that they wouldn’t feel the charge? Could be. Maybe that is how the owner of the Taser company got away with standing in a pool of water. Or maybe he was in de-ionized water.
So, how did I survive being hit with 480 volts? Easy. I wasn’t grounded and the electricity didn’t go through my heart. Most people who die from electric shock die because the heart gets shocked out of its rhythm. Then the person dies from lack of oxygen. Some people who die from the electric shock receive so much that their body or critical parts of their body are destroyed.
Also, some people who get shocked may go for a day or two without showing any further visible signs. If the duration of the shock is long enough AND through the flesh under the skin, the flesh may take a day or two before showing more deterioration. Healing from these types of shocks takes months.
Fortunately for me (at least so far), my incident seems to have been minor. I have little pain and just two very small burns at the side of the first two joints of my index finger.
Finally, it is not the voltage that kills, it is the current. Current is the measure of how many electrons flow through the conductor over time. One tenth of an amp is enough to put your heart off rhythm. That’s right—one tenth of an amp.
Still using that electric razor next to the sink where you just washed your hands?
“Maybe that is how the owner of the Taser company got away with standing in a pool of water. Or maybe he was in de-ionized water.”
No, the guy was actually hit by the barbs. It wasn’t a miss like PAD’s question describes.
You can, with most tasers I’ve seen, actually grab someone while they’re being hit. We do it all the time at re-cert and training courses to keep someone from going splat too hard and breaking something. You just have to keep your hans out from between the two areas that the barbs went into.
Same with the owner in water. The circuit created went through him but not into the water.
Plus, the whole water thing is weak anyhow.
PAD, if you’re writing something then just wing it if you can. Most police issue tasers won’t do what you seem to be asking. But, as I noted before, no taser stuns the way it’s always shown to do in TV, movies and comics anyway.
If you’re doing a bit with a real world based bad guy, just have him note the mild mods done to the device. Wouldn’t take much. If you want police taser real….. You may not get what you want to use.
No it won’t even tickle you. The current will travel through the water. Also it will also use a term called Skin effect. Since the voltage is so high and has no currrent it can only go on the surface. hence the resistace of water is so very low compared to the body. it will just go around ya. You leg hair might stand up but thats about all. Now if now you were standing in 2 pools of water with on foot in each pool. And one probe in each pool thats a differnt story…
Well, it worked in the YuGiOh! manga… On several people.
“If you’re doing a bit with a real world based bad guy, just have him note the mild mods done to the device. Wouldn’t take much.”
Well.. it would take modding physics…
Posted by Alan Coil at September 21, 2005 06:04 PM
Finally, it is not the voltage that kills, it is the current. Current is the measure of how many electrons flow through the conductor over time. One tenth of an amp is enough to put your heart off rhythm. That’s right—one tenth of an amp.
Well, at that level it’s unlikely that DC would kill you, but AC — either the 60 Hz (cycle per second) that we use in our homes in this country or the 400 Hz that’s used in aircraft and ships a lot — does interfere strongly with heart rhythms at those low current levels.
My own (definitely measured) record shock was fifteen thousand volts off an X-ray tube anode block; the power supply on that one had a maximum current capability of 3 milliamps, so it was safe, but definitely painful. (Let’s just say that everybody in the plant knew something had happened to me, if not exactly what, immediately.)
I say “definitely measured”, because a couple of little gag gadgets we once rigged up in Ground Electronics at the Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily that used inductive kick (the surge of voltage that a transformer develops across open secondary leads when a DC flow through the primary is established or broken quickly) probably developed more than that across an open circuit (with effectively zero current capability) but the spikes were too fast (and the voltage too sensitive to loading) for anything we had to accurately measure…
Still using that electric razor next to the sink where you just washed your hands?
As long as you’ve got a working GFI (Ground Fault Interruptor — that little gadget in the wallplug that says “Press Red Button to Test”) it’s okay — a GFI reacts almost instantaneously to ground fault currents in the fractional milliamps.
downed power lines are low voltage/high amperage.the transformers on the power poles convert it to higher voltage/lower amperage to power households. i(amp) * r(resistance)= v (voltage).it’s not the voltage that gets you.200 volts at 0.03 amps is negligable. 12volts at 3amps(a car battery) will stop your heart.
Hi PAD,
No, you won’t get much effect. The shock goes from point A (one prong) to point B by the path of least resistance. Since the water between the electrodes is at least marginally conductive, most of the shock just goes between them.
If you are talking a lightning strike, then that is an entirely different thing. Then point A is the sky, and point B is the ground. If you get a strike near the pool that you are in (swimming) then you have a lot of current going to ground. Since your body is a bag of salty water, it is actually MORE conductive than the fresh water in your pool, so more of the current seeks its way through you than the water around you, and you get zapped. If you are in salt water, LESS current flows through you, but you probably still get zapped.
But for a taser, your victim would probably just get a tingle. Try a high-tension power line, and you have a better chance of ruining his day…
Charlie
As a teen, I was electrocuted once by an old, all metal goose-necked lamp while using its light to look for some coins that had supposedly fallen down a floor heating vent in our house. I was laying on my side on the floor to peer down the vent, and my right elbow (and thus the entire weight of my upper torso) was resting on the neck of the lamp. The lamp neck apparently had a frayed wire inside, because when my fingertip touched the metal edge of the vent, I was electrocuted. The whole episode was rather surreal, for although I could not move for what seemed like several minutes, I could still think, breathe and forceably talk. I know about the “forceably talk” part because friend walked in while I was getting fried, and when he went to grab me, I remember having enough state of mind to shout “Don’t touch me.” At some point soon after that my finger must have moved enough from the vent to break the circuit, and I was free. My right arm had a white, one-inch melted oval on it that took weeks to scab over (no — I didn’t go to the doctor — I was a dumb teenager, remember?). I still have the scar.
This particular incident involved only 110 volts, but probably a significant amount of amperage, depending upon whatever the resistance was between the electricity path through my arm and the vent (ground). A direct short, of course, would have blown the old style twist-in fuse in the basement, so the resistance in my arm must have been significant. Generally, the amperage is what kills a person, not the voltage, so most of the amps were pulled by my arm, not my heart or my brain. Still, there was obvious some amperage bleed-over from my arm to the rest of my body, since I could not move and could only speak with great effort.
In the case of a Taser, unless the amperage bleed-over in a pool was significant, I don’t see it having any effect on a person standing far away from where the two leads hit the water. We’re not talking lightning bolt amperage here.
By the way, chlorinated water does conduct electricity.
“Well.. it would take modding physics…”
Not really. We really do have things now designed to shock targets in/under water. A smart bad guy could tweek the system well enough to do it.
Ok, so how close to a bolt of lightning striking water do you have to be? Obviously it can’t travel forever all the fish would be dead. Since a student asked me this very question today, I’m curious–what is the size of the kill zone?
I’d go with Dave Van Domelan’s answer..he’s got a PHD in Physics and a SDPHD (Super Duper PHD) in Pseudophysics!
As for Yugi-Oh…that was in a shadowgame, so that doesn’t count!
dont know about water, but certin peppersprays/mace can cause a person to catch on fire if they are stun with a stungun or taser, where i work at, we sell a non flammble spray so the cops dont get in a heap of trouble for causing someone to burst into flames!!
Posted by patrick at September 22, 2005 08:13 AM
downed power lines are low voltage/high amperage.the transformers on the power poles convert it to higher voltage/lower amperage to power households. i(amp) * r(resistance)= v (voltage).it’s not the voltage that gets you.200 volts at 0.03 amps is negligable. 12volts at 3amps(a car battery) will stop your heart.
Every bit of the above is wrong.
(A) Power lines run at higher voltages,lower currents, and are transformed down for domestic service.
Distribution lines are generally, i believe 220/250 volt 3-phase, split to single phase and transformed down to 110/120V for household use (though stoves, driers and similar widgets generally use 250v).
The big cross-country high-tension lines go well into the thousands of volts.
This is because power (w) equals volts (e) times amps (i), the power lost in transmitting electricity through a line equals i^2 * r (the square of the current times the resistance of the line; even a big old thick copper cable has measurable resistance when you string miles of it); at the current required to deliver, say a megawatt (which, at 250v, would be 4000 amps, and, if your line has 1/10000 ohm resistance per mile, then, 100 miles away, you will have lost 160,000 watts of your original megawatt (and the voltage will be down to 210v).
Take the same megawatt, but run the line at 20,000 v — now all you need is 50 amps to make a megawatt — and you lose 25 watts on that same hundred mill run, giving you a voltage out the other end of 19,999.5v
(This, BTW, is why we use alternating current, rather than Edison’s original direct current — since you can’t run DC through a transformer, you can’t transmit it long distances without incredible losses.)
Now that i’ve told you much more than you probably want to know about voltage and current in power transmission, let’s look at a more personal application.
As to what will kill you — .03 amps — whatever voltage drives it — through the heart can and will kill, though not reliably and with a lot of other caveats. (As i said before, more likely if it’s AC, but don’t get cavalier around DC either. A dead exception to a rule is just as dead as a “happens every time”…)
Given the the resistance of the human body can approach a low of a hundred thousand ohms, and that Ohm’s Law (i apologise — the poster got that more o rless right, but used it entirely inappropriately) says that current (i) equals voltage (e) divided by resistance (r), how many volts to get that 30 milliamps (.03a)?
Turning Ohm around, voltage equals current times resistance, so:
E=(.03a) * (100,000 ohms) = 30v.
This tells us that anything from 30 volts on up can be fatal, but that the car battery the poster cited is never going to be fatal (except there’s tha exception thing — if your resistance was REALLY low for osme reason i can’t imagine…)
(Incidentally, neither are the thousands of volts that the spark coil under a car’s hood turns that 12v battery’s output into going to be fatal, because there’s virtually zero current there.)
Note to self: If ever invited to BBQ at Peter’s, make sure self not standing in pool of water.
🙂
From the Darwin Awards:
1999 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed True by Darwin
(25 May 1999, Ukraine) A fisherman in Kiev electrocuted himself while fishing in the river Tereblya. The 43-year-old man connected cables to the main power supply of his home, and trailed the end into the river. The electric shock killed the fish, which floated belly-up to the top of the water. The man waded in to collect his catch, neglecting to remove the live wire, and tragically suffered the same fate as the fish.
In an ironic twist, the man was fishing for a mourning meal to commemorate the first anniversary of his mother-in-law’s death.
Bill M. asks: “Ok, so how close to a bolt of lightning striking water do you have to be?”
Story from my youth: some friends and I hopped in the car to run down to the local Shop-Rite for some roughage during a weekend movie gathering. It had just started raining really hard as we went in, and by the time we got out, most of the parking lot was under a 6 inches to a foot of water (it had drainage problems). The thunderstorm was pretty wound up by that point, so we decided to make a run to the car (which was up-slope). We took off our shoes and socks and slogged for glory… and halfway through the puddle, a bolt of lightning struck a lightpole right as we passed it. There were the five of us standing 10-15 feet away in an anlke-deep puddle, as well as maybe one or two other people further out from that who were emulating us to get to their cars. The five us us felt a tingle akin to touching a plug that’s not firmly seated in an outlet.
Obviously, I’m no physics teacher, but I hope this puts you in the ballpark. I’ve always wondered what it would’ve felt like had I been the only one standing there.
Bill M. asks: “Ok, so how close to a bolt of lightning striking water do you have to be?”
Story from my youth: some friends and I hopped in the car to run down to the local Shop-Rite for some roughage during a weekend movie gathering. It had just started raining really hard as we went in, and by the time we got out, most of the parking lot was under a 6 inches to a foot of water (it had drainage problems). The thunderstorm was pretty wound up by that point, so we decided to make a run to the car (which was up-slope). We took off our shoes and socks and slogged for glory… and halfway through the puddle, a bolt of lightning struck a lightpole right as we passed it. There were the five of us standing 10-15 feet away in an ankle-deep puddle, as well as maybe one or two other people further out from that who were emulating us to get to their cars. The five us us felt a tingle akin to touching a plug that’s not firmly seated in an outlet.
Obviously, I’m no physics teacher, but I hope this puts you in the ballpark. I’ve always wondered what it would’ve felt like had I been the only one standing there.